Fiction

The details for this round were indicated in your assignment email from the Judge Coordinator (aka Competition Drone) and your Judge Instructions. The email also contained the category and title of each work that you were assigned. Refer to that email for any further instructions.

This form will be used for both the Preliminary and First Rounds.

In the Preliminary Round, take a broad view of the scoring areas. For example, you can't tell after reading only three chapters whether the continuity of the whole book is poor or excellent. Make your selections based on what you have been asked to read.

In the First Round, you will read the entire work and judge the book as a whole.

TheNon-Fiction and Poetry categories are listed in this form, however, you will not judge those two categories using this form. They have their own forms. If you received this link in error for those two categories, or have any questions, please contact the Judge Coordinator.

Fiction Scoring Form

id

date time

Your Name

Enter your name. If you indicated a preferred name on your registration, you may use that. We just need to know who you are.

eMail Address

Please enter your primary email address.

Your Fiction Scores

Please keep in mind that your scores will determine whether or not this entry will move forward to the next round. Consider each scoring area and indicate your scores with care.

A ten (10) indicates a perfect score and, while an entry may be superlative in one area, the chance of it being perfect in all is highly unlikely. Your job is to objectively evaluate the quality of the work and to eliminate those entries which are not award-worthy.

You are not the only judge, so don't feel bad about giving low scores. Assign the scores you believe the entry deserves.

The entry title

Enter the title of the book as indicated in your assignment email. For instance, My Dog Ozzy, not FC-MyDogOzzy.

Category

Please select the category.

Plot

Was there a hook that grabbed you and drew you in? Did you get a clear picture of where the story was going? Did the story engage you or did it slog along? Did the plot sag in the middle? Did any subplots support the main plot or did they take away from it? Were all plot threads convincingly tied up?

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Characterization

Were the characters compelling and well-motivated? Did they have distinct voices? Did they act in a believable manner? If the author did research to build a character, how well was research woven in?

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Setting

Did the story have a complete sense of time and place? If it’s apparent that the author did research to build the world, how well was research woven into the story? Were descriptions evocative, drawing you into the world? Did the writer build a convincing world?

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Continuity

Did the story make sense? Were changes in POV handled well? Were there holes in the story? Were descriptive facts, like eye or hair color, physical or verbal tags, consistent throughout?

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Overall Evaluation

Looking at the book as a whole, was the writer's voice clear, demonstrating a command of language and story-telling techniques? Did you feel an emotional or sensory impact? Would you want to read another work by this author? Only consider the author's work, not the production aspects which you will judge in the next fields.

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Editing

More than copy editing, though that is included here. Were there spelling and punctuation errors, misuse of homonyms? Syntax errors? Awkward phrasing? Keep in mind regional spellings & dialects.

Evaluate how well the editor caught flaws in plot, characterization, continuity, etc. Yes, you might mark the author down on the specific area, then mark the editor down here.

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Presentation

Is the book "pretty?" Consider fonts, spacing, formatting of the pages. Was the formatting consistent throughout the book? The PDF version should not have had any conversion errors due to the publisher's format. Generally, this score is high, but it it doesn't look like a professionally published book, take off!

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Category

Does this work represent the category? Did the entrant choose the most appropriate category for their entry? Give the entrant some leeway, as ePublishing allows for cross-genre works. No indicates a grossly misplaced entry.

The default is Yes.

NoYes

Move to the next round?

Preliminary Round: Should a judge be asked to read this book in its entirety?

First Round: Should it be considered a finalist in its category? Would you be happy ("Yes") if this work was the eventual winner? Is it a pleasant read, but not something that you'd recommend to a friend ("No")? If it's just mediocre or plain bad, definitely "No."

The default is No.

NoYes

Comments

This field is not required and you shouldn't feel compelled to enter anything here. It is not for feedback on the work. Use only to indicate why a book is in the wrong category, why you gave a book all 9s or 10s or all low score. You only have 100 characters.

You can drag the box from the bottom right corner to make it bigger.

100
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